Social change, mentoring and art drew Jonell Logan to the League of Creative Interventionists.

Logan’s role as executive director of San Francisco-based LCI began on Nov. 9, but she will continue to operate from the Charlotte area.

“The call [about a national search for an executive director] came out from the League, and I had seen it,” said Logan, founder of 300 Arts Project, an arts management and consulting company. “About three or four people kept sending it to me. I figured that I would apply. It was right in line with what I wanted to do, and what I have been doing kind of independently, and how I actually decided to get started in the arts. I went through the process, and here we are.”

Hunter Franks founded LCI in 2014, and served multiple roles during its inception, including director. Logan is LCI’s inaugural executive director. “We are in this great transition point where we are looking at what has happened in the past—really figuring out the strengths of the program and what we do and building that, because we are already a national organization,” Logan said. “We want to strategically expand the program to support more artists in different cities to really create a league of people who are invested in social change and community empowerment through creative means.”

Franks, an artist, developed LCI as a way of fostering community and supporting those who live there through creative means. His brainchild has become a Knight Foundation-funded program over the last two years, which has provided the opportunity for fellowships. Charlotte creative Janelle Dunlap is among their 24 fellows, and Logan served as her mentor.

“They have fellows who are in Charlotte,” Logan said. “Each fellow gets a mentor. This year I was asked to be the mentor for one of the fellows—Janelle Dunlap. That was really my introduction to the league.”

Dunlap is one of four Charlotte fellows in the 2018 program, which began in 2017 with 16 members.

“I really loved a lot of what they were doing—the whole idea of using art as a vehicle to empower community for social change,” Logan said. “The idea of funding artists who are doing this work, because it really can be difficult for artists who want to invest in community and use the arts to do that, to find the resources to do so, and the mentor part of it. The fellows aren’t totally out there on their own trying to figure it out. There is some guidance that they receive.”